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[Fantine is left alone, unemployed and destitute]
[FANTINE]
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
[FANTINE]
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
Lyrics submitted by fallacies
Track duration: 04:28
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The composer is Claude-Michel Schönberg and the speaker of this song is Fantine the character name of the singer in “Les miserable”. The figurative language used in the song is: oxymoron, simile and hyperbole. “No song unsung, No wine untasted” is an oxymoron because there is contradictory. This conveys a carefree atmosphere of youth. “With their voices soft as thunder,” is a simile and an oxymoron. This is comparing softness with thunder and contradictory because thunder isn’t soft. “He took my childhood in his stride” meaning he took her childhood without a second thought. All of the figurative text used shows how much her dream love never cared about her.
"He took my childhood in his stride" hits me to the core every time I hear this song. A girl who is young, innocent, naive, and fearless gets the darkness, and coldness of the rest of the world thrust upon on her, because of trusting love too blindly. He took away her rose colored glasses, he took her life as she knew it and turned it upside down, then "was gone when autumn came".
I am no where close to the heartbreaking situation Fantine is in while singing this song, but I am bitter about love right now, and that lyric sums up so much. Love love love Les Mis!
france went through more than one revolution, apart from the more famous one that everyone thinks of (bastille, marie antoinette, etc): [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…]
the unabridged version of the novel is ridiculously long but amazing and well worth plowing through to get the full backstory on the characters- fantine is in love with tholomyes and she and her girlfriends and their boyfriends are all bffs and such. then the guys decide to "go back to society" and ditch their girls. unfortunately for fantine, "she had given herself to tholomyes as to a husband, and the poor girl had his child." so she's single and preggers. she decides to give her baby girl (cosette) to an innkeeper and his wife (the thenardiers) and pay them to raise her daughter in a normal life. except she doesn't know that the thenardiers are awful and are criminals and treat cosette like shit and keep scamming fantine out of more money. anyway so fantine gets fired from her job and has to sell herself (including her hair and her teeth) in order to pay for her daughter's well-being.
that being said, this song is about the loss of youth and innocence, the loss of carefree days, the loss of faith in love, the loss of one's position in society...about being crushed by life being left alone. it's beautiful.
I'm only 14 years old, but this is how I perceive the line:
"I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."
When she sings "So different now from what it seemed" she means that when she was younger the thought world was a kind, happy place of dreams and she thought when she grew up her life would be perfect, but now that she's older the world is a much darker, sadder place than she thought, and her life is very different to what it seemed to be when she was younger.
She dreamed (or wished) that her life would be wonderful and happy when she was older, but as she grew up her life got harder.
When she finishes with "Now life has killed the dream I dreamed." She means that things didn't work out how she'd wanted them to, and instead of living her dream, her real, sad life proved to her that she would never have her dream.
I could be wrong, but that's what it means to me. Hope it kind of helped!
It's such a sad song, and a tragic ending for poor Fantine. I absolutely love the musical.
Could anyone clarify the last but one line, though?
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
"So different now from what it seemed"... I'm afraid I don't really get the "from what it seemed" part. Would anyone be as kind as to shed their light on this?